Structures and Functions of Glycans in Glycoproteins.

It is well established that the glycans in glycoproteins are often involved in important biological phenomena. To understand the role of the glycans attached to glycoproteins in solution, structural information obtained by NMR spectroscopy is obviously required. Recently we have developed a systematic stable isotope labeling method for NMR study of glycoprotein glycan. We have applied this labeling method to Fc fragment of immunogloblin G, with a molecular weight of 50K. Here we describe the labeling strategy and briefly discuss the structures and functions of glycans attached to Fc fragment.